Short takes

Tuesday

Dec 25, 2012 at 12:01 AMDec 25, 2012 at 10:33 AM

THE APPOINTMENT of Judith L. French to serve on Ohio's highest court is an excellent one. French has a sterling resume, having served on the Franklin County Court of Appeals since 2004, defended Cleveland's school-voucher program before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997 and served as a visiting judge several times on the Ohio Supreme Court.

THE APPOINTMENT of Judith L. French to serve on Ohio’s highest court is an excellent one. French has a sterling resume, having served on the Franklin County Court of Appeals since 2004, defended Cleveland’s school-voucher program before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997 and served as a visiting judge several times on the Ohio Supreme Court.

But it’s not her experience alone that makes French, 50, a fine successor to serve out the remaining two-year term of retiring Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton. In announcing the appointment, Kasich stressed French’s “good values,” intelligence and independence, qualities which will buffer her against being “bullied by the crowd on the court.”

French is a strong pick on her personal merits alone; she was chosen after what Kasich described as an arduous selection process from among 13 strong applicants.

She may be the newcomer on court, but French said her role model as a judge was widely-respected former Ohio Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer, who set a high standard in his long tenure. For her part, French assured Ohioans that she will “interpret Ohio law strictly and ... always remember that my role as a judge is limited.”

• A FEDERAL judge has upheld Ohio’s new exotic-animal law, affirming that the state has a legitimate interest in protecting the public safety in putting the same type of reasonable restrictions on exotic-animal ownership that most other states already had.

U.S. District Judge George C. Smith wrote that while the plaintiffs who challenged the Ohio Dangerous Wild Animals and Restricted Snakes Act “may be responsible dangerous-wild-animal owners, there are some that are not.”

Government frequently places restrictions on behavior in the interest of the greater good; this is clearly a case where it is reasonable to curtail the “rights” of a few in order to help ensure that people are not put in danger.

The new law allows current owners to keep their animals if they register them with the state, pay permit fees and meet some basic requirements for things such as caging and insurance coverage.

The argument of some owners that these new requirements are too costly or will put them out of the breeding business were weak, as Smith ruled, when weighed against the rights of others to not be endangered.

The tragic case of Terry W. Thompson, the Zanesville-area animal owner who released dozens of his animals before shooting himself, was very unusual, but the visibility it brought to Ohio’s weak exotic-animal laws unfortunately was what it took to finally put sensible safeguards into law.

• A POTENTIALLY dangerous error in a state law shows why citizens must be vigilant.

House Bill 349 sailed through the House and Senate early this year with a total of 121 members voting for it. But the mistake was discovered by a Gahanna woman, Patricia Kovacs, who was checking to see if this rather mundane legislation would affect bicyclists.

The bill was meant to align Ohio’s laws with a federal traffic-control manual, which states that a vehicle can stop at a red light and then “turn left from a one-way street into a one-way street.” Somehow, Ohio’s bill left out the words into a one-way street.

Columbus police and the city attorney’s office say that means vehicles can permissibly turn left onto a two way street, across a lane of traffic. That’s a recipe for disaster.

The bill’s sponsor is working to fix the oversight. But meanwhile, motorists should follow common sense and not the law.